


we are the wild ones

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Gen, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 05:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: That boy, take me away, into the night / Out of the hum of the street lights and into a forest.(faerie au)





	we are the wild ones

**Author's Note:**

> see end notes for more details on individual fae lore

The first time Blue Sargent saw a faerie, she was six years old, and far more sensible than any child should rightfully be. This was to be expected when you had grown up in a house full of psychics at the edge of a lazy Virginia town. By the time Blue could walk, she had already crawled everywhere of interest. By the time she could speak, she had already learned it was best, in the world they lived in, to keep your mouth shut about magic.

Three was a very neat number, in the scheme of things, like a ribbon on a present. Pairs were overdone, lovers and enemies and vegetables in pods, but three still reserved its power, a song as old as stars. Three had _potential_ , or so she was told _,_ and three and itself overflowed with it.

As the story went, the faerie, of unidentifiable court or legend, had offered her a sweet, and six year old Blue had bit them. Apparently, she drew blood. Sixteen year old Blue found this story extremely satisfying, despite not remembering it.

If she had been taught anything at 300 Fox Way, it was: 1) Do not accept gifts from the fair folk unless you are willing to pay the inevitable price, 2) Do not eat their food unless you wish to spend the rest of your days dancing and drinking in a stupor until you rot, 3) Do not burn patchouli in the house. Patchouli is disgusting. Everyone will hate you and you will be blacked from the family portraits.

Blue had a few additional rules of her own: 4) Do not tell anyone that your mother, aunt, cousin, and other variously-related women living in your house are psychics unless the listener in question is currently standing in said house, desiring a psychic, 5) Do not tell anyone that while your mother, aunt, cousin, and other variously-related women living in your house are psychics, you are not, 6) Do not tell anyone that you see faeries, and 7) Stay away from raven boys.

Blue was, at this very moment, breaking all of these rules. Except for the one about patchouli. She would never dream of breaking that rule.

She dreamt of other things; things that glowed in the shadows, things that beckoned and called and whispered your name, roses that grew into cages, children that had been stolen long ago, candles that never went out, smiles as sharp as knives, feasts and fairy rings and winged creatures making deals in dark Henrietta alleyways. Your soul to lift a curse, you’re cursed to win a soul. She dreamt of this day, right now, and she would dream of it for years to come.

The first time Blue Sargent saw him, she knew what he was immediately. Even under the fluorescents of Nino’s, the pizza parlor where Blue worked and the most blessedly ordinary place in her strange town, he shone brighter than a sun. This struck Blue as unfair; Nino’s lighting was not kind to anyone the slightest bit human, and the boy hadn’t a chance of disguising himself there, Aglionby Academy uniform or not. Even mundanes without the gift of Sight could see that he was timeless, at once youthful and ancient. He was radiant, he was golden, inhuman and unnatural and dangerous. Poison diluted with honey. He was summer. Specifically, he was Summer Court.

He had many names, but these were the ones she chose for him: raven boy, sidhe, trouble.

He preferred Gansey. _Just_ Gansey.

Currently, Gansey was patting his pockets. “Would you like a mint leaf? I’m sure I have one somewhere. I always do.”

“Is there a price?” Blue said. She particularly enjoyed how nasty this sounded. “My immortal soul, perhaps? My first birthday? My left pinky?”

“Good heavens,” said Gansey, blinking at her, fast. His fingers slipped absently into the pocket of his khakis, and, at last, he produced a mint leaf. “Who do you think I am, exactly?”

“The kind of person who wears a tie to a pizza parlor. The kind of person who carries chewable plants in his pockets. The kind of person who, when a five-foot waitress with a pink switchblade pulls him into an alley and orders him to leave town or he’ll bite metal so hard his _grandmother_ will feel it, offers her _money_ to forget it ever happened, and then a _mint leaf._ ”

“So you think I’m an asshole,” Gansey said.

“Like all raven boys,” Blue agreed. “And all faeries.”

Gansey did not seem at all surprised to learn that Blue had caught onto his charade. In fact, his face cleared. “Ah,” he said, relieved. “That’s what this is about. I was worried someone put you up to it.”

“You make a lot of enemies who threaten you in alleys?”

“Shockingly, yes. My parents are involved in politics. At least, that’s my cover story.” Gansey smiled at her. It was a smile designed to win over everyone in the room in one dazzling, sunshine flash. Blue’s body reacted instantly, but her head didn’t buy it; she could see the barely-hidden trickster clinging to his glamour, taste the burnt-sugar magic crackling in the air. She didn’t trust him. How could she?

Blue leaned against the wall of the alley, flicking her switchblade open and closed. Several of her fingers were covered in Dora the Explorer band-aids, left over from trying to get the hang of the thing earlier in the week. While Dora the Explorer was not regarded as the toughest of cartoon characters, the kid had chutzpah, and Blue wore the band-aids like battle scars: they proved that she knew how to use this knife, even if it had taken some practice. She noticed Gansey eyeing Dora warily, and smiled back with all her teeth.

“So,” she said, “are you someone important, then?”

“Are you asking whether or not anyone will miss me if you gut me right here?”

“Most definitely. My knife is iron.”

“Well, in that case.” Gansey chewed his mint leaf thoughtfully. “No, I’m not important, but yes, someone will miss me. Three someones. I hope.”

Blue tipped her head toward the building. “Your friends in there? They’re Fae, too. They hide it better than you, but I could smell it.”

“You have an excellent nose,” Gansey said. “I don’t think I like the way you say _Fae_. As though it’s a swear word. I take it you don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings toward my kind?”

“I don’t hate you, if that’s what you mean, but I won’t be inviting you to dinner. I don’t _trust_ you or your kind, that’s the end of it. You may look like a Christian youth group‘s wet dream, but you reek of magic. We’re a tight-knit community, here in Henrietta. We may not particularly like each other, but we dislike outsiders even more. You’re a time bomb, and I don’t want innocents to be caught in the blast. And,” she added, “any word is a swear word if used correctly.”

Gansey sighed, long and deep, and dragged a palm down his face. “I have a terrible feeling you and Ronan would get along,” he said. “You seem to know a lot about us and our rules, while I know next to nothing about you, except that you’re quick with a weapon. Who are you, mysterious stranger? Are you a psychic?”

Blue tucked the switchblade into her pocket so that her arms were free to cross. “No, I’m not, but I’m familiar with several, which happens to be kind of a sore point, so don’t ask again. Just a heads up.”

“Noted. I told you my name, with a sharp object pointed at me, no less. Care to divulge yours?”

Blue snorted. “Unbelievable. You lot always want something, don’t you? This is why I wouldn’t take your mint leaf.”

“You are stubborn,” Gansey said, exasperated. “There’s no price on this. Have you considered that maybe I don’t have nefarious designs on your town? Maybe I just like going to school here! Maybe I’m just asking your name like a normal person, because, if I’m not mistaken, when you’re nearly knifed by a high schooler, you might want to know who they are.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Blue scowled. “It’s never that simple. You want something? You gotta give a little first. It’s not a deal unless we’re both satisfied.”

“I imagine you’re never satisfied. I’ve already offered you something, which you declined, I might remind you. Tell me your name.”

“No dice. I _imagine_ ,” Blue drawled, imitating Gansey’s rich summer-saturated drag, born on the other side of town from her own accent, “you have an endless supply of mint leaves. Whatever you give away, you have to miss it, or it doesn’t count. I know how this works. Tell me a secret.”

“Obviously, we’re going to run around in circles till I give in, so _fine._ ” Gansey looked embarrassed. “The mint leaves are a replacement for smoking. I’m trying to get over a cigarette addiction.”

Silence settled. Gansey’s embarrassment increased exponentially as the seconds slid on. Because she had not been expecting that, and it was a meaningful secret, heavy, one he obviously didn’t want her to know, Blue said, “Hm. Blue.”

“I know, it is sad, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be above temptations of the flesh.”

“No, my name, it’s Blue. Blue Sargent. And, if it helps, I’ve never known a faerie to be above temptation.”

“It doesn’t, but thank you.” Gansey smiled again, more genuine this time. His teeth were perfectly white, his mouth perfectly pink, his cheeks perfectly dimpled. Disgusting. He didn’t look like someone craving a cigarette, but she couldn’t be sure she was even seeing his real face. He pressed the pad of his thumb to his lower lip, and it was so organic a gesture that for only a moment it disarmed her, and for only a moment she saw something young and hungry in his eyes; like the way things were wasn’t enough, like he _wanted_ so deeply and so desperately it was eating him alive.

Blue knew that look, because she saw it so often in the mirror.

Eventually, Gansey held out his hand. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Blue Sargent. A strange name for a strange girl.”

Blue eyed him, looking for any trace of that wondrous boy beneath, but it was gone. It could have been a trick of the light. “I don’t shake hands with Summer Court lackeys.”

“Oh, Blue,” Gansey said, wild and delighted and fierce, eyes flashing molten gold, and the thing that stood before her now was nothing like his other face, that barest glimpse of humanity she’d caught in her fist. “I am no lackey. I admire your spark, little mouse, but I was never in any danger from you. I’m more ancient than the earth beneath your feet, more powerful than you can even imagine, and you think a little iron will hurt? Your knife is nothing. You can cut, but I won’t feel it. I have been more than courteous to you, Blue Sargent, and now all I ask is a single gesture of good faith. Shake my hand.”

“No.”

Gansey sighed. “Oh, come _on_ , it’s not a blood sacrifice! I’m just being polite. This is what humans do when they meet someone new, isn’t it?”

“I’m not shaking your hand, sidhe. It’s non-negotiable.”

“ _Christ_ , you’re magnificent,” Gansey said. “I just threatened you with age-old faerie magic and you didn’t even flinch. I _like_ you, Blue. I think I’ll keep you.”

“I still want you out of my town.”

“I still want to finish my pizza. I don’t think your manager will be pleased if you skip out on your shift because you’re holding a paying customer hostage in an alleyway.”

Blue glared at him. He had a point. She hated that. “This isn’t over,” she warned, waving the switchblade yet again. Light danced across it menacingly.

“No,” Gansey agreed. “It most certainly is not. You’ll see me again. I have a feeling we’re going to be _fast_ friends.” He ran his fingers through his hair, his glamour tightening around him like a shield, and stepped into the shadows. At once he was gone, slipping through the cracks of reality as swiftly and elegantly as a star. Only the lingering scent of mint and magic remained.

Blue was having a shitty night.

 

*

 

A week passed before Blue saw Gansey again. She had not forgotten their conversation, or his promise, but she’d encountered Fae before, with far less preferable results, and life went on; she went to school, she went to work, she came home, she helped with clients.

The way she’d had it described to her, everyone had an aura. Some auras were overwhelming or aggressive, some were gentle, and some were clairvoyant. Loud, quiet, amplifying. This last was Blue’s. In addition to her Sight, the genetic ability that allowed her to recognize and even see through glamours, passed down through generations of Sargent women, Blue also possessed a strong astral signal. She naturally drew certain kinds of magic towards her, concentrating it, like the iron core of an electromagnet.

This power was both extremely useful and extremely irritating. She was often asked to sit in on readings for various relatives or their psychically-inclined friends, but there was a much rarer focus for her so-called gift, one that only came once a year: Saint Mark’s Eve, the night the dead walked.

_(“Gansey.”_

_“Is that all?”_

_“That’s all there is.”)_

She didn’t recognize him at first, or even at second and third. His voice was stripped bare, his face hazy, indistinguishable, but he wore the Aglionby uniform, splattered with rain, and when he said his name she heard the echo of their conversation behind Nino’s. _Gansey. Just Gansey._

He looked so young. He looked so human. He couldn’t be that shining sidhe, not in a hundred lifetimes, but then Blue remembered the other face he’d worn so briefly; the way that had seemed young and human.

 _Coincidence,_ she thought, because that’s what she had to believe.

_(“Neeve, he’s dying.”_

_“Not yet.”)_

Faeries might be heartless, but Blue was not.

 

*

 

When it came to the fair folk, Blue had many rules; don't touch them, don't accept their food, don't make deals with them unless the deals are made on your territory and your terms, and even then, don't do it unarmed. These were baseline, sensible rules, designed to keep all her vital organs where they should be, especially her heart. There was no fate slower or more agonizing than dying of love for a faerie.

There was one last rule, though this was not Blue’s alone: don't get in the car.

Don't Get In the Car was the most important rule of all, though it had moved with the times and was now unrecognizable from Don't Take The Hand, Don't Follow The Voices/Lights/Music, and For God's Sake Don't Accept The Ride On The Horse From The Handsome Stranger, I Don't Care How Friendly He Looks.

Now Blue was presented with a classic case of what one might call, Don't Accept The Ride In The Camaro From The Handsome Near-Stranger. He looked extremely friendly. He was wearing a peach-colored cardigan.

“Hello!” Gansey said pleasantly, craning his head out of the driver’s side window to see Blue better. His eyes flicked to her fishnet-clad legs, then back up to her face. “Nice day for a walk.”

It was, in fact, not a nice day for a walk. It had been grey and cold since early morning, and Blue had underdressed, and not eaten breakfast, and missed her bus on top of it all, and was now faced with thirty minutes home in the wet, post-rain chill of a Virginia spring. It was, however, a nice day for a drive in what seemed to be a piece of junk but was nevertheless a piece of junk with walls and seats and heating and a pretty boy she could probably trust not to make any sudden movements. Probably. Gansey obviously knew this; he could see the gears turning in her head. It was only her pride that held her back.

“Yep,” Blue said, noncommittal, walking faster.

Gansey’s car rolled forward, catching her up with ease.

Irritation sparked hard and furious in Blue’s stomach, because she was afraid of him, and when she was afraid of something, she got angry about it. She suspected that he was really quite well meaning, perhaps even kind, and if he had been anyone else, in any other body or school sweater, they might have become friends. But the mere fact of what he was lingered in the back of her throat, impossible to swallow. You couldn’t trust faeries; she’d been told you couldn’t trust faeries since she was three years old.

“Do you want a ride?” Gansey offered.

Blue shook her head. She tugged her second-hand jacket tighter around her, trying to keep out the chill. Her switchblade was in her pocket, out of sight, but she left it there; she wanted to see what he would do.

“Blue,” Gansey said quietly. “It’s freezing. Get in the car. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“That,” Blue said, biting back sudden, horrible, nervous tears, “is exactly what someone who wanted to hurt me would say.”

“Blue,” Gansey said again, but it was different, this time, more urgent, as though he’d remembered something he wanted to tell her. “Have you ever felt like you weren’t meant to be here? Like there’s something else you’re supposed to be doing, something incredible, something you’ve only ever dreamt about? Like your whole life, you’ve been biding your time for something to come along and sweep you up and show you an adventure, magic and kings and betrayal and blood, some greater destiny you were always truly meant for? Something... something _more_ than this?”

Blue stopped walking. She looked at Gansey, in his peach cardigan and collar buttoned up all the way, hanging halfway out of his awful car, voicing the exact longing that had haunted her for over a decade, ever since she’d seen her first faerie, the day everything had changed for good. There he was, offering her exactly what she craved. Offering her _something more._

“Yes,” she said.

Gansey nodded, thoughtful. “Me too.”

Blue Sargent got in the car.

They pulled up to the intersection in silence, waiting for the light to change. Blue kept her hands close, clutching her school bag in her lap, hyper-aware that she was, for all intents and purposes, trapped. She felt like a bug in an upside down shot glass.

Gansey kept his hands on the wheel; he was also aware of this fact, and, it seemed to Blue, doing his best to put her at ease with it. She couldn’t decide if this was endearing or suspicious. Was he being polite, or luring her further into danger? The light changed, but Blue stayed, caught between so many warring sides of her own self.

“Address?” Gansey prompted.

Blue turned to look at him properly, face to face, instead of marginally sneaky side-long. He was still glamoured, summer-sunned and hazel-eyed, but in the light of the rainy day she could just barely make out the shimmer of magic near his ear as he turned his head. She was glad for it. It reminded her what she had momentarily forgotten, when he’d spoken of _something more_ : they could never be the same. “You know the address,” she said.

Gansey made a noise of acknowledgement, and shifted gears. The Camaro shuddered, groaned, and jerked forward, no longer the smooth glide that had followed Blue along the street a few minutes ago.

Gansey sighed. “Why must you fight me every step of the way, you great beast?” To Blue, he said, “Should I just take you home, then?”

Blue scraped her teeth against her bottom lip, a bad habit she’d developed years ago solely because Calla had once told her not to do it. She thought about the rest of her day; homework, then dinner alone, then a mile to her waitressing job, then four hours of serving unruly teenagers who laughed at her whenever she turned her back, then a mile home in the dark, then bed, then waking up for school and doing it all over again, while everyone else was special around her. She thought about the rest of her day. She thought about the rest of her life.

“No,” she said, sudden, impulsive. “No, let’s go somewhere. Take me somewhere.”

Gansey frowned. “Are you sure, Sargent?” he asked, his voice strangely gentle, inviting her to change her mind. “You said you know of my kind, of our rules. You do know what you’re asking... Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Blue said, heart pounding. “Take me somewhere, Gansey. Not forever. Just for a little while. I want to meet your friends.”

 

*

 

In addition to numerous rules, Blue also had numerous secrets.

The first time Blue Sargent saw a faerie, she was six years old. She bit it, and it cursed her.

All her life, she’d been told that if she ever kissed her true love, they would die. The curse was brutal, it was unavoidable, and it was highly specific, but it wasn’t instantaneous, and that was the worst part. It might happen tomorrow, or it might happen three years from tomorrow, or it might never happen. _If_ she kissed her true love. Not _when._ It was the uncertainty that bothered her; it was the haunting.

Even if she hadn’t been brought up by psychics, that encounter would have soured her for the fair folk. They’d only ever brought her heartbreak.

Gansey’s temperamental Camaro pulled up to an abandoned warehouse, heavy brick and dust-frosted windows. The east side proclaimed _Monmouth Manufacturing_ in faded Logistica _._ Creeping ivy covered every available surface. Gansey cut the engine, rested his arm on the wheel, and looked at Blue expectantly.

Blue, momentarily forgetting her reservations about getting too close to him, leaned over to peer at the rundown building. “Is this where you live?” she asked, doubtful.

Her own home was nothing particularly impressive, but this place, lost to time, a better spot to kill someone than to host them, didn’t seem up to Gansey’s speed. Neither did his car, which spat and spluttered every time he touched it. It was strange to her that someone so clean-cut and charming, so clearly from money, would favor things that were so desperately in need of fixing. His looks didn’t match his taste. Maybe she’d read him wrong.

Gansey seemed disappointed at her reaction. His thumb skittered across his lip. “Sometimes, yes,” he said. “Other times, no. I hang around.”

“You haunt.”

“It’s our way,” Gansey said, unapologetic. “I like this town. It has so many secrets.”

Blue was about to argue that Henrietta was like any other town, but she remembered her family of psychics, the power of the corpse roads, the grinning creatures that clung to the shadows, the Fae, the ghosts; the feeling that something heavy had happened here, or was happening, or would happen. She thought _heavy_ like _important_ , and then _heavy_ like _difficult._ The protest died on her tongue.

“I guess,” she said, instead. “Are your friends in there? The ones from Nino’s?”

Gansey nodded. He rolled his sleeves up his forearms in neat squares of fitted fabric, until she could see the skin of his wrists, the gesture at once unbearably human and unmistakably _other_. He was too precise, too perfect. Blue wondered what he was hiding beneath this all-American schoolboy act.

“Do you want to go inside?” Gansey asked. “We can still turn around. I can still take you home. It isn’t too late.”

Blue shook her head. “I told you, I’m not staying with you forever. Just for the afternoon. Just until it gets dark. Then you can take me home.”

“There are _rules,_ Blue, I can’t promise—”

“I can take care of myself.”

She sounded more confident than she felt. She wasn’t sure, after all, that she could resist him; not because he was pretty, although he was, and not because he was magic, although he was, but because he had offered her something different. He was her ever-elusive potential personified. The longer you spent around the fair folk, the less mortal you became, and some days it seemed that _mortal_ — fallible, perishable, inelegant — was all Blue would ever amount to.

How easy it would be, to let him transform her.

Gansey looked at her, and Blue forced herself to smile

“Please, sidhe,” she said. “You are not nearly as tempting as you think you are. Plus, if you get fresh, I have my trusty switchblade.” She patted the pocket of her coat.

“I won’t get fresh,” Gansey said, smiling back despite himself.

“If your pals get fresh, then.”

“Always a possibility,” Gansey conceded. “Shall we?”

The interior of Monmouth Manufacturing was unremarkably similar to the exterior, full of dust and concrete and faded graffiti, at least until they reached second story, accessed by a deteriorating staircase.

Blue paused at the top, ran her fingertips against the rail, wondered what percentage of the building was iron and if it hurt him to breathe in it, thought about all the urban exploring you could do here, and ultimately decided she liked it. It was a deathtrap, and awfully large and lonely, but there was something almost romantic about the whole situation, framed right: the ageless boy in the factory that time forgot.

Unlike the ground floor, the second was furnished. The front room, which seemed at first like the only room until Blue turned the corner and caught a glimpse of the kitchen, contained a bare mattress on a wire frame and more books than one person could ever conceivably read, unless of course they had centuries to read them, which Gansey did.

Sprawling the floor was what seemed to be a scale model of Henrietta, made from paper and volumes and miscellaneous household objects. It was shockingly accurate. Blue stepped gingerly through it, so as not to upset the painted cardboard post office or the plastic trees meant for Toys ‘R Us train sets.

“Is this my house?” she asked, crouching beside a paper formation, further out than the rest and elevated on two books. She already had her answer; it boasted a tiny sign that exactly mirrored the real one she passed every day. _Readings & Advice, _ in smaller print, _Appointments Preferred, Walk-Ins Scrutinized,_ and beneath that, _Yes Soliciting._ Someone had taken great care with the sagging porch and the tree in the backyard, rendering every detail in devoted miniature. She couldn’t decide whether to be charmed or disturbed, or to feel sorry for whoever had spent so much time and effort on it.

“That’s recent,” Gansey said, as if to reassure her.

“He works his designs on your town in the night,” said someone else.

Blue startled and stood up, narrowly avoiding crushing another creation — was that the red construction paper roof of Nino’s? — with her boot.

Leaning against the frame of a nearby door stood another faerie in an Aglionby uniform, his tie undone, his sweater askew. His hair was shaved mercilessly close, and a tattoo like a knife was just visible over his throat. A black bird perched on his shoulder, talons digging in.

Gansey sighed. “He means I build this stuff when I can’t sleep. I self-medicate my chronic insomnia with crafts hour.”

“Faeries can get that?”

“Unfortunately.” Gansey spread his hands, indicating the new faerie. “Blue, this is Ronan. Ronan, this is Blue. She lives in the house on the hill.”

Blue stepped out of the way of the model, not eager to have another close call with something so obviously treasured. She wasn’t fully comfortable here yet, and the addition of another supernatural creature in the room set her firmly on the defensive. When she was afraid, she got angry. Southern hospitality had never been her thing.

“Hi,” she said shortly, jerking her head toward the boy— Ronan. “What are you supposed to be?”

The bird on the Ronan’s shoulder ruffled its glossy feathers and peered smugly at Blue. It was a look that clearly said, _Oh ho, you’ve done it now! I can’t wait to watch you regret this._

“I’m your worst nightmare,” said Ronan, baring his teeth. They were wicked and pointed, better suited to a shark than a grinning high schooler. “I’m in the darkest parts of your dreams, picking my teeth with your bones. I'm the monster under your bed. I’m the Cailleac Bhuer. Didn’t the bad temper and the carrion crow tip you off?”

Blue cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you only appeared as an old woman.”

Ronan’s grin fell. He seemed more irritated than frightening, now. “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Those websites always get it wrong. Chainsaw’s a raven, anyway, not a crow.”

“Don’t mind him,” Gansey said to Blue, thumb on his lip, voice low, as though he were sharing a secret. She liked the way his fingers looked against his mouth, delicate and conspiratory. “No matter what he claims, he doesn’t eat babies.”

“And the part about walking in my dreams?” Blue murmured back.

“Completely true.” Raising his voice again to its normal volume, Gansey asked, “Ronan, where’s Adam?”

“How should I know?” Ronan said this not like he meant it, but like a reflex. After a moment, he added, “Kitchen.”

Gansey turned back to Blue. “Have you seen enough, or do you want to meet the other people in my life?”

He said _people,_ and Blue heard _threats_ , but she’d asked for this, begged for it, even, and she was the daughter of psychics. Curiosity trumped danger every time. She pushed her shaky hands into the pockets of her coat, touching the handle of her switchblade like a charm. “Lead the way.”

The kitchen was not so much a kitchen as a jarring study in the way of the Lost Boy; a collection of untouched cabinets and gratuitous marble counter space, a brand new dishwasher without dishes, drawers that opened onto nothing. Blue spotted an expensive electric kettle and a couple of free-standing apples, but no fridge. It was like walking into one of Gansey’s miniatures. It looked real from the outside, but it was empty. It was what unearthly things thought a kitchen should be.

These boys needed parents. Did faeries have parents? To Blue, who lived in a house forever full of sound and bodies and someone to mother you at a moment’s notice should you desire mothering or dread it, that was a sad thought. She turned her focus back to the disaster zone at hand.

A young man with dusty hair occupied the only chair at the table, bent over a book that looked as life-worn as the messenger bag at his feet. He had brown skin like Blue, but lighter and covered in freckles. He glanced up when they came in, but only out of politeness.

“This is Parrish,” Gansey said to Blue, and then, correcting himself, “Adam. And this... this is Noah."

At first, Blue wasn't sure who Gansey meant, since there was no one else in the room with them. But a white light flashed at the edges of her vision, and thin, smudgy fingers carded through her hair. Though uninvited, the touch was gentle, almost childlike, clearly a greeting, and a friendly one at that. Blue couldn't help but lean into it, all her worries vanishing like smoke.

Soon, as the rest of him materialized, she saw that the hand belonged to an equally thin and smudgy boy, faded like an old, discolored photograph. He had deep, inquisitive eyes, and glowed the same color as her name.

This time, no one had to tell Blue what he was; she knew at once, instinctively, just as she had known that Gansey was sidhe, so many weeks ago in Nino’s.

"Oh," she cried. "He's a will o' the wisp!"

"Hi, Blue," Noah said. His voice curled like parchment paper. "Nice to meet you."

He held out the hand that had previously been on top of her head, and before Gansey could comment, Blue was shaking it. Noah's grip was firm, his skin cool, much more solid than Blue would have expected from a wisp.

She beamed at him. He beamed back. It felt as though they had been friends for a hundred years, a thousand. Wisps had guided mortals for longer than that, and though the generations moved on, the soul did not forget. They were stars come back to each other.

Gansey frowned at the pair of them. "You'll shake hands with him, but not with me?"

"He's a _will o' the_ _wisp_ ," Blue repeated, as if this was reason enough. “He’d never hurt me.”

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” Gansey said, offended.

“I would,” Ronan said.

Gansey shot him a look. It said, _Down, boy._

“Apologies, my king,” Ronan said, dangerously sarcastic, bowing so low that his bird hopped to the top of his shaved head to avoid falling off him. The bow was at once sincere and mocking, theatrical and over-honest.

Blue whipped around to face Gansey, her good mood vanished. He stood up straighter at her attention, pulling his golden glow more tightly around his shoulders until he shimmered and shone. “Oh, stop showing off. What does he mean, king?”

Gansey rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, embarrassed. “Remember how you asked if I was someone important and I told you I wasn’t? Well, unlike Ronan, I do lie.”

“ _King?_ ”

“King of Summer, yes. Or at least, I will be.”

“You’re kidding.” Blue eyed the four of them. She felt that she was the punchline of an elaborate joke, and it was not a nice feeling, but the boys’ expressions gave nothing away. Adam was not even looking at her anymore. “You’re not kidding. Are the rest of you royalty too?”

"Knight of Autumn," said Ronan proudly. Chainsaw ruffled her feathers again, as swift and shifting as falling leaves.

"Page of Winter," said Noah, and exhaled a cloud of ice-crystal breath that shivered everyone in the room to their vertebrae.

"And you?" Blue said, rounding on Adam.

Adam lifted his eyes from his book. They were kind eyes, but looking for escape. Forests of possibility behind one-way glass. "Friend of Gansey," he said.

Blue frowned. "No, come on, really, which one? Spring? It must be the Spring Court, right? The lot of you are like a council. One diplomat from each."

Adam huffed, amused. "Ronan’s no diplomat. And I'm no faerie.” He licked his thumb, pressed the edge of a page down, and flipped to another chunk of text. He had a black streak across his knuckles and the back of his hand, grease or dirt or blood, something dark and earthy. "I’m mortal. Just like you."

"No," Blue said, "you're really not." She prefered to think that no one else on Earth was just like her, and she _knew_ this boy, regardless of how many minutes ago she’d met him. The lonely always recognize their kin.

"No, I am, I promise," Adam said, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. "Completely, utterly ordinary. Not a magic bone in my body."

"That's because me and Gansey are over here," Ronan called, and then hissed an acid, “ _Ouch_ ,” because Gansey had punched him in the arm.

“I don’t know,” Gansey mused. “You fix my car a lot. I’d definitely say that’s magic.”

“No one can fix the Pig, Gansey,” Noah said. “He just makes it go another mile.”

"You're not human," Blue insisted, ignoring them all. This felt urgent for a reason she couldn’t explain. "Even if you're not Fae, you're _something_. If you don't want to tell me, whatever, it’s your business, but don't lie to yourself, too."

"I happen to be first class at lying to myself," Adam said, standing up and shoving the book under his arm. "I should win a medal. I told you: I belong to Gansey’s court. We all belong to Gansey, in the end, whether we like it or not. Excuse me, I have a job to get to. It was nice meeting you, miss Blue."

"Want a ride?" Ronan asked, flashing his pointed teeth again. He said this like it meant something else altogether.

Adam sighed. Out of the spotlight of the kitchen fluorescents, he looked tired, as though he held all the worries of the world on his shoulders.

“Always,” he said, touching Ronan’s arm just once, and quietly, a kind of intimacy passing between them that Blue knew at once she could never understand.

Ronan snapped his fingers. In a single flutter of eyelashes, like slipping into sleep, they were gone. A dog howled somewhere outside, possibly at the abrupt appearance of two boys that had not been on the street before.

Noah, taking his cue from the others, disappeared, too. Blue’s brain rewrote the moment they left the way your waking mind rewrites a dream around your understanding of it, until you can’t get the original back.

“ _Well_ ,” said Blue.

“Yes,” said Gansey.

“Are they always like that?”

“Mm.” Gansey thumbed at his lip, patted his pockets, sighed, and finally snapped his fingers, just as Ronan had done, mere moments before. Flame sprung up between thumb and forefinger, but there was no cigarette to light. He looked at it despairingly, and then snuffed it out, caught in an internal battle of desire versus sense. Blue, all too familiar with desire versus sense, watched this process intently.

Finally, Gansey said, “I promise they’re really quite lovely, once you get past the barbed wire.” He held his elbow out to Blue. “Shall we?”

“Where are we going now?” Blue asked, hooking her arm through his.

“I know a place,” Gansey said. “Another place. One with less weirdness. Do you trust me?”

Strangely, Blue found that she did.

“Not in the slightest,” she said, and Gansey snapped his fingers.

For one moment, Blue experienced the new and unpleasant sensation of being aware of each of her atoms at once— how they connected to form her and how fragile it all was, how easily disassembled.

She blinked.

She was still beside Gansey, but instead of walls around them, there were trees taller and more graceful than she’d ever seen before. A bright orange bird the size of a fist was perched on a nearby branch, watching them with dark, intelligent eyes. The grass smelled sweet.

“Welcome to Cabeswater,” Gansey said.

“What is this place?” Blue breathed, too afraid of disturbing it to raise her voice.

Gansey laughed: a sudden, strange, delighted glimpse of pearls. “Home.”

 

*

 

It was late when Blue returned to her own house, sneaking past the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and up the stairs, careful to avoid the notoriously creaky step.

She slipped into her room, locked the door, shucked off her clothes with relief, and fell into bed. She looked at the familiar cracks and patterns in her ceiling and rubbed her sore feet together, giddiness and guilt bubbling in her throat.

She’d spent the day with a _faerie_ — a whole _host_ of faeries — and she’d _liked_ it, liked them, liked Gansey, in ways she’d been told she never could. She’d let her guard down, and he’d stepped in before she could put it up again. He’d stolen her away. Blue pressed her face into her pillow to keep from laughing, or screaming, or crying.

They had wandered through the haunting forest for what felt like hours, days; the passage of time moved differently in Fae lands, flowing around them like river water around stones. Nothing mattered there; anger and fear did not exist. Faeries were wild, unchained, incapable of guilt, and so was their world. Blue never wanted to leave.

“Are you sure you’re human?” Gansey asked as they walked.

Blue pursed her lips with displeasure. A butterfly flitted by on honey wings. “Pretty sure.”

“It’s only that— Well, you seem like you could be lesidhe. They’re nature spirits, a little androgynous, resent humans for their callous treatment of the environment. And the trees here love you.”

It was true. The trees whispered to her, foreign phrases she couldn’t parse. Blue recklessly put her hand on Gansey’s arm, skin to skin, slowing him. “What are they saying?

“They want you to stay,” Gansey said, not looking at her in a way that made it clear the only thing he wanted to do was look at her. He glowed here, more even than in Henrietta, impossibly, irresistibly bright; he was in his own kingdom now. “Although—  that could also be _keep._ They’ve been waiting for you. They say— “ He paused. “ _Regina_ _nostra corvum._ Our raven queen _._ ”

Blue’s breath hitched. “Queen?”

Gansey made a soft sound. “Could be a mistranslation. I’ve never been good at Latin. Or the trees are equally as bad. Mint leaf?”

At the memory, Blue sat up again. She removed the pillow from her face, threw back her covers and crossed the room to crouch beside her tossed clothes. She fished the feathery green leaf from the pocket of her shorts and held it up to the bare moonlight. She had not eaten it; taken it from his fingers only to prove to herself later that he was real. He hadn’t asked for anything in return; maybe he already had what he wanted from her. The thought thrilled her as much as it terrified her.

They’d met the other boys again, later, at the pizza parlor, when Blue asked Gansey to return her to reality. As much as she wanted to stay in that place, that forest of song and light and magic, she was a sensible girl before she was a fanciful one, and she’d remembered her job, her homework, her mother, her rules designed to prevent her curse.

Gansey kept his word, and Blue kept her secret. They had been together for only an afternoon.

It felt too long. It didn’t feel nearly long enough.

She’d clocked in, rung up, waited; she was working the register, and the shop was quiet, save the elderly couple by the window and the faeries at the counter.

Gansey and his friends sat close, so she could talk to them without leaving her post, but she still felt separate, whether they were raven boys or magic boys, so mostly she listened. The afternoon light was fading fast, and it was surreal to watch them joke and jostle openly in her presence when only this morning they would have been unwelcome in her world, and she in theirs. The familiar smell of grease and the clatter of plates unmoored her after the forest, the factory, these creatures she was growing too quickly and dangerously entangled with.

They were not what she expected.

Gansey had a sense of humor and a shocking amount of self-hatred for a sidhe, Ronan kept showing his soft underbelly when he thought no one was looking, and Adam had apologized to her first thing through the door; caught her eye, came right up, handed her a small and bashful smile. It was the smile more than anything else that finally convinced Blue he was as human as she was.

“It’s fine,” she’d said, flushing to her toes. “I didn’t mean to interrogate you like that. I don’t know what came over me. I guess I felt I had something to prove.”

“Yeah,” Adam said ruefully. “Being Gansey’s friend can do that to you.”

“I think it was more being powerless in a room full of magic teenagers.” Blue lifted her brows. Now that she looked again, there was something about Adam that made her feel bold. “But I promise that next time I’m rude to you, it’ll be because you actually deserved it.”

Adam’s mouth expanded like a star at that, betraying a bright, blooming thing behind the soul-grime and the escape-eyes, and just like that, he was beautiful and young.

They all were.

In her bedroom, knees kissing the carpet, Blue clutched the mint leaf to her chest with both hands. She hadn’t let herself think about Saint Mark’s Eve, but her defenses were lowered, and now it found a way in.

 _Gansey,_ the rain-splattered sweater, the touch of his hand to his face so mirroring his familiar thumb-to-mouth gesture that it undid her completely, the blur of his features replaced now in her memory by the long straight nose and crinkling eyes she’d seen only an hour ago _. Is that all,_ a whisper, misplaced grief yawning in her chest, uncertain which she wanted more: to know that it wasn’t him, or that it was. _That’s all there is._

To anyone else, it would appear strange, even cruel, that Blue had been so close to someone she knew would never see next summer and hadn’t said a word. But to her, it was the only choice, or rather, it was the one that hurt the least. How could Gansey — charming, easily-offended, terribly polite and politely terrible Gansey, on the surface so shiny-clean and careful, under it so full of faith and fear and havoc and _want_ — match the hollow shade she’d spoken to that night?

And if they were the same, how could she tell him?

It had seemed so impossible yesterday. Gansey was centuries old; Gansey was just a boy; Gansey was going to be king, and faeries didn’t die. They _could,_ but they didn’t. If they did, no one mourned them, not the other faeries and certainly not a Sargent. Each woman in her family had had something taken from her by the fair folk— a child, a lover, a voice, a chance at an uncomplicated life. Sometimes all of the above, or most.

Neeve said, _Either you’re his true love, or you killed him_ , and under the cloudy moonless sky, with the Virginia bugs humming and the bones of the ruined church beside her, Blue had thought it much more likely to be the latter.

Now, she wasn’t so sure. Now, she thought it might be both.

She held the leaf tighter, knowing she was crushing it and not caring. Three hot, traitorous tears slipped down her cheeks, one chasing another. She squeezed her eyes shut, sucked in a breath, unfolded her fingers, told herself to stop being ridiculous. He was a faerie. Within a year, he’d be nothing. It would be so much easier just to hate him again.

Blue dropped the leaf and climbed back into bed. Her hands were shaking, so she pressed them to her face.

They smelled like mint.

**Author's Note:**

> adam - changeling (children left behind, often mentally ill and/or otherwise disabled, wise beyond their years, "speaking of things no child should know")
> 
> ronan - cailleac bhuer (irish in origin, ill-tempered, walk by night, with a carrion crow perched on their shoulder, typically appear as old women)
> 
> gansey - sidhe (beautiful fae nobility "who never fade from their youthful appearance, often appeased with offerings or sacrifices”)
> 
> noah - will o' wisp ("appear as flickering, wavering, or glowing lights near marshes, meadows, or forests, and often guide travelers”)
> 
> kavinsky - mazikeen (“winged faeries who can't fly, sole purpose is to steal interesting objects for their endless revelries, do not need sleep and can party all the time,")
> 
> blue - human with the sight (artemis was tir e e’linte / tree-light)
> 
> courts correspond to seasons - summer, winter, spring fall - and are not intrinsically good or bad. they are governed by one monarch (summer - glendower). child monarchs permitted to run wild until they come of age, when they go through the process of remembering their past lives, become reincarnated self, govern until they die naturally or are killed, then the whole process starts again.
> 
> 300 fox way’s sign says “yes soliciting” because solicitation is defined as a request for something. to solicit is to ask for, and asking is the most important part of tarot. i don’t know about other miscellaneous psychic work, but i’m sure questions are important for that too. sometimes more important than answers.
> 
> i've been working on this for a while, and i'd love to continue it. especially to address further how the gansey/glendower split would work, and reveal adam's status as a changeling-- even to him! maybe i'll return to it. but for now i'm happy with this, and i wanted to share it. i hope you enjoyed!


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